About Me

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My name is Ryan, I am married, I have 2 young sons and am blessed with a wonderful family.

I have been told since I was very young that I have special connection with dogs and all animals so I spent a lot of time volunteering at SPCA when I was a teen.

I started my career with dogs as a dog groomer for 6 years, I also worked for a local shelter taking care of the dogs. Becoming a professional dog trainer had been a long-time goal so I took a course (through Good Dog out of Coquitlam) on becoming a dog trainer and I have been hooked ever since.

I am obsessed with learning and constantly bettering myself, I read a new book every month or 2 and have taken other courses and seminars and am always trying to upgrade my skills so that I can help as many dogs as possible.  Currently I am going through the Will Atherton Dog Training Academy to learn from who I think is one of the best.

I also am extremely lucky to be mentored by Evan Doggett from Doggett Style Dog Training!

I would be considered a “Balance Trainer” but personally don’t care for the term because: 1. there is  a lot of correction-based trainers who refer to themselves as balanced trainers and 2. it makes it sound like I use 50% Reward and 50% correction but that is just not that case. 95% or more of what I do Is reinforcement/rewarding the dog. I believe puppy training should be 99.999% reward/reinforcement and using your voice and body language is usually enough to “correct them”.

I believe that I am not the perfect dog trainer for everyone! You should train with someone you believe in and connect with, if that's not me, that's Okay!

This is quote from another trainer, Will Atherton that I think beautifully sums up how I feel about training.

“As a balanced dog trainer, it is no secret that I advocate for the use of fair and loving corrections with dogs but in a world where there is so much controversy around you should correct a dog, or you shouldn’t correct a dog why do I believe that you should? Well, it’s important because we want our dogs to not be filled with anxiety, fear and confusion. 

With positive based methods that are wonderful by the way, I use them every single day, they are brilliant at teaching our dogs what we do want them to do but the problem is if we only ever show them what we do want, we have no ability to let them understand what it is that we don’t want and then they display behaviors that we get frustrated, angry, and annoyed by which forces the dog to be confused because they don’t know. That means that they don’t trust you and look up to you as their calm consistent leader which perpetuates the problem and makes the dog worse and worse and worse. 

Now the same can be said if you only ever correct a dog. If you only ever correct a dog, you’ll help the dog understand what you don’t want from them, but you’ll have no way of telling them what you do want them to do and that is the essence of balanced dog training and that is why balanced dog training is the single best form of canine leadership, canine ownership and canine training on the planet.

We help our dogs clearly understand what we do want from them through the wonderful realms of positive reinforcement, food and toy work but through occasional, fair and loving corrections we help them understand what we don’t want so those bad behaviors happen less frequently and that results in a calm, confident, and content dog that knows exactly where it stands, that could look up to you for guidance and direction in all given situations and are happy in the fact that you are their loving leader but to achieve that we must strike balance.”